ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2005
Competence-programmed predation of noncompetent cells in the human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae: genetic requirements.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2005. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 157 papers.
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Who cites it
157 citing papers in PubMed, 301 citations in OpenAlex.
- A synopsis of competence-regulated virulence inVirulence · 2026Review
- RggmBio · 2026Article
- LytF contributes to pilus extrusion during natural competence inJournal of bacteriology · 2026Article
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- LytF contributes to pilus extrusion during natural competence inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Transient inhibition of cell division in competent pneumococcal cells results from deceleration of the septal peptidoglycan complex.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Glycosylation of serine/threonine-rich intrinsically disordered regions of membrane-associated proteins in streptococci.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Structure, Function, and Regulation of LytA: TheMicroorganisms · 2025Review
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- The global proteome ofFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Competence Regulation inCurrent medicinal chemistry · 2025Review
- Pneumococcal pneumonia is driven by increased bacterial turnover due to bacteriocin-mediated intra-strain competition.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Pneumococcal competence is a populational health sensor driving multilevel heterogeneity in response to antibiotics.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Escherichia coli has an undiscovered ability to inhibit the growth of both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Revisiting the Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins : The Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins.Microbial ecology · 2024Review
- Article
- Fever-like temperature bursts promote competence development via an HtrA-dependent pathway in Streptococcus pneumoniae.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
- Testing for the fitness benefits of natural transformation during community-embedded evolution.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Nasopharyngeal competition dynamics are likely to be altered following vaccine introduction: bacteriocin prevalence and diversity among Icelandic and Kenyan pneumococci.Microbial genomics · 2023Article
97 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Natural competence for genetic transformation is the best-characterized feature of the major human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae. Recent studies have shown the virulence of competence-deficient mutants to be attenuated, but the nature of the connection between competence and virulence remained unknown. Here we document the release, triggered by competent cells, of virulence factors (e.g., the cytolytic toxin pneumolysin) from noncompetent cells. This phenomenon, which we name allolysis, involves a previously undescribed bacteriocin system consisting of a two-peptide bacteriocin, CibAB, and its immunity factor, CibC; the major autolysin, LytA, and lysozyme, LytC; and a proposed new amidase, CbpD. We show that CibAB are absolutely required for allolysis, whereas LytA and LytC can be supplied either by the competent cells or by the targeted cells. We propose that allolysis constitutes a competence-programmed mechanism of predation of noncompetent cells, which benefits to the competent cells and contributes to virulence by coordinating the release of virulence factors.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.